What's Wrong Sherlock?
by green-blooded-computer
Summary: Eight year old Sherlock is having trouble with school and Mycroft tries to balance running the family and his own personal problems.


**This is my first attempt at a Mycroft character study. Every Kid!lock fic I've read has described their parents as very dismissive, posh, and sort of rich snobs. Based on the show their parents seem like perfectly ordinary people and I wanted to write a fic that would show that. I also love the relationship between Mycroft and Sherlock and tried to capture that here.**

"Sherlock, please!" she cried as she made yet another grab for the curly-haired Tasmanian Devil that was whirling around the room, clutching a box to his chest that was leaking a most foul substance. She let out an exasperated shutter and slapped her hands down against her thighs - a sign that she was giving up with the child. He obviously couldn't be controlled. His tiny feet padded along the floor in dirty socks as he skirted his way out of the living room and down the hall. The slam of a bedroom door came seconds later, followed by an aggravated, dry sob from the woman.

Mycroft Holmes sat perfectly perched in a nearby armchair with stern, grey eyes trained on the women, his mother, who was attempting to pick up various books and trinkets Sherlock had pushed over in the sitting room. He felt bad for his mum…Sherlock was a wonder of a boy. For being so intelligent, he had such a tough time with rather simple concepts. Mycroft had been attempting to understand his thought processes since he was a toddler, but he proved a much harder case to crack than he has initially assumed. Mr. and Mrs. Holmes were a perfectly ordinary couple, which added to the puzzle of how they had produced two sons that far exceeded society's expectations in one way or another. Neither one was ever able to deal with the children, as they functioned on two entirely different levels of thought. Both boys were bright and clever in all the school subjects, but something was lacking in the younger one. He seemed unable to deal with the brilliance and talent he was dealt. His social skills were wacked, as opposed to well-adjusted or even nonexistent, and simple things, such as holding a conversation or following a simple set of instructions, were difficult for him. Mummy and Daddy thought it was an ordinary case of rebellion, but Mycroft knew of barely any eight years olds who would go through so much trouble only in order to study the anatomy of a dead frog which had been the contents of the box Sherlock had clasped in his little arms.

Mrs. Holmes stood up, arms full of a variety of things, and shot Mycroft a helpless look. The older boy sighed a stood up slowly, slinking from the armchair. At sixteen years old, Mycroft was tall, lanky, though suffering from a few odd bumps and lumps that caused his school uniform to fit him around the middle in an odd way. He approached his mum and took some of the things from her, relieving her from some of her bumbling.

"Try not to worry, Mummy," he told her in a calm voice. His eyes darted toward the boy's bedroom. It'd been silent since his fit. "I will talk to him." Mrs. Holmes sighed a laid a hand on her son's cheek. She tried very hard, he knew, and was a loving mother. Neither she, nor their father, really understood the trouble the boys went through on a daily basis - especially their younger son. Mycroft did his best to manage the family, doing what he could to keep his brother in line and his parents happy at the same time. Mr. and Mrs. Holmes were easy to please. They weren't bothered with grades, as Mycroft's were always perfect, nor were they bothered with peer pressures, as Mycroft was quite well adjusted and didn't find any offers of drugs or alcohol to be of any concern to him. He had a quaint number of friends with which he was satisfied and spent an appropriate amount of time with, though they bored him rather quickly. On occasion, he'd indulge in a cigarette, which his mother knew nothing of and his father promised to keep quiet from her. Overall, Mycroft had been able to adapt to the world around him without much concern. It was like living with a handicap that no one was privy to. He had the tools to deal with it himself. That was the only way. It wasn't as if anyone understood.

Sherlock had been his last hope. He had come to the realization when his baby brother was born that he might be just like Mycroft. Completely in tune to the world around him, able to grasp academic concepts in the blink of an eye, particularly capable when it came to common sense and relations…a genius in every sense of the word. However, as Sherlock grew older, Mycroft learned that was not the case. He had similar abilities, of that he was certain; however it seemed he was not able to handle them on his own. While Mycroft possessed a steady emotional range that could carry and balance his intellect, Sherlock had none of that. Therefore, he wasn't able to deal with these gifts on his own.

When pressed to the edge of his emotional strength, Mycroft found comfort in something so mundane that he was almost ashamed to admit it - sweets. He loved cake, scones, and truffles…anything that could metaphorically fill the void that separated him from the ordinary. He loved sweets, and indulged in them far more often than he should have allowed. It seemed likely, due to Sherlock's personality, that he wouldn't be satisfied with pasties in order to keep himself sane. This worried Mycroft on a daily basis, as the boy was old enough now to begin finding more dangerous ways to deal with his frustration.

He placed a few books on the coffee table and straightened up to collect himself before heading down the hall toward Sherlock's room. He stopped at the door, well aware that the boy was likely lying on the floor and spying on his shoes through the crack under the door. He was expecting Mycroft's arrival and already formulating ways to deny him entrance into the room, though he knew he'd never win.

He raised a fist and rapped against the door gently. Before the third knock he heard the gruff little voice shouting from the other side, "Go away!" He sighed and lowered his hand.

"Sherlock," he said in a perfectly even tone as if he were discussing the weather. "Open the door and let me in." There was a bit of scuttling going on inside the room and the sound of objects falling. Mycroft sighed. "If you don't let me in, I'll force my way in myself." The commotion stopped and the elder brother had thought himself victorious for a moment until another shrill cry broke through the wooden barrier.

"Go AWAY, Mycroft!"

He sighed once again and stretched up on his tip toes to fetch the hidden skeleton key that he stored on the doorframe, out of Sherlock's reach, and swiftly opened the door.

The inside was a mess. Sherlock's room was not large and seemed even smaller due to the clutter of random instruments and filth that littered the floor. He took care not to step on anything untoward when he entered and quickly located his brother, face down on his bed, head buried in the duvet. The small, cardboard box was on the floor, on its side, leaking the liquid that Mycroft quickly identified as formaldehyde. He crinkled his nose and distinctly avoided the box as he moved to perch himself gracefully on the edge of the bed.

"Sherlock," he said in a warning tone. The little boy grunted in response, a pathetic attempt at self-defense, but didn't move. Mycroft set a gentle hand on his brother's tiny back and pressed lightly. "What's wrong, Sherlock?"

His question was met with a few more moments of silence before the boy rolled over, his face showered with dark curls, and glared up at Mycroft with ice blue eyes. His little round cheeks were hot and flushed. Mycroft slid a hand from his back to his face and pushed the hair out of Sherlock's eyes so they could see one another clearly. Instead of repeating the question, he raised his eyebrows expectantly.

Sherlock huffed again and struggled to sit up, hugging his knees tightly to his chest when he managed to right himself. "Mummy tried to take my experiment away from me," he complained defiantly. Said "experiment" was beginning to stink up the entire room and Mycroft gave it one incredulous glance before returning his attention to the task at hand.

"Mummy isn't as interested in amphibian anatomy as you are, Sherlock," he explained in a factual tone, as if that was something everyone ought to know. He'd thought it very odd that his brother had taken an interest in such a thing in the first place, but he stopped questioning what went on in that head of his once he'd started nicking things from the school's private store. At least he wasn't running around London attempting to steal human corpses.

"Mummy isn't interested in anything," Sherlock groaned, throwing his hands into the air in a big, dramatic gesture. "She tells me to go and play with the neighborhood boys when I'm bored, but they are all so _stupid_ I can't stand to be around them. So she tells me to do schoolwork to amuse myself, but I've _done _all my schoolwork and that's boring anyway." He fiddled with the corner of the duvet. Mycroft watched his little fingers work the fabric for a moment before covering the boy's hand with his own.

"But stealing frogs from the laboratories?" he questioned. "You aren't learning about that yet, you are working on…what was it you were doing in your lessons? Astronomy?"

"If you could call it that," Sherlock glowered. "But it wasn't anything useful, just boring things. The sun goes around the Earth and all that." He waved a hand dismissively. "Boring." Mycroft considered pointing out that he had it the wrong way around, but now wasn't the time.

"So why is the frog so important? I thought you wanted to be a pirate?" Mycroft had the patience of a saint. He recalled every detail of every minute, an ability that proved quite useful, but also quite annoying if he didn't file the memories away just right. Of all the things to recall about his brother - all of his finicky eating habits, all of his preferences in music, and all of his worst fears - remembering that he wanted to be a pirate was the easiest. He reminded the entire family about four times a day from ages three through six and, though he stopped being so open about it, he could commonly pass the boy's room and hear the muttered curses and inflections of a pirate directing his bed-sheet covered ship into deeper waters. For Christmas, Mycroft had gotten him (with financial assistance from his parents) the microscope he'd requested, but also a wooden pirate sword, which had caused Sherlock's eyes to light up upon opening but which was later discarded when Sherlock claimed he was too old for such a childish toy. Later that evening Mycroft had gone to the kitchen for a glass of water and seen his baby brother sneaking back into his room with it silently, so no one would notice him. He had grinned to himself.

"Pirates aren't real," Sherlock hissed. "I want to learn useful things. Biology is useful. Chemistry is useful. I am so much better at sciences than the children in my class. I can do the work the sixth years are doing. Their work isn't nearly as boring."

"First of all, pirates are most certainly real," Mycroft corrected. "They are even more terrifying than the ones in your stories and they plague the coast of several different countries vandalizing trade routes and harming innocent civilians." Sherlock knew that and he wondered why the child was being so difficult. "Second of all, your sciences aren't boring. In fact, you haven't even learned them correctly. The _Earth_ revolves around the _sun_, Sherlock, not the other way 'rou-"

"Oh I don't care!" he groaned, stretching his legs out in front of him and leaning back on his hands. "The older children get to dissect the frogs and I want to try. They are teaching us _baby_ things in our classes and I can't stand it, Mycroft! Everyone is so idiotic! Even the teacher."

Mycroft sighed. It must be difficult for Sherlock to manage himself in such an environment. Mycroft had been fortunate when he was in school. He'd been able to keep his head down and do all of his work quickly and quietly. Now they liked it when the children interacted and worked together. Sherlock hated working with others. "Look, Sherlock, I know a_cademically_ you can run circles around your classmates, but _emotionally _you just aren't ready to move on. I had to sit through each grade and take all the tests and do all the assignments just as you have to."

"Yea, but you had _friends_," he grumbled. Ah. So that was it. He had guessed that Sherlock had suddenly given up his dreams of becoming a pirate due to the fact that his classmates often mocked him for it. When he questioned Sherlock, the boy denied it and ran off in a tizzy to avoid further conversation. Since then, Mycroft had been thinking of ways to approach the topic, but came up empty handed.

"How do you put up with people?" Sherlock prodded, pulling his knees to his chest again and looking away from his older brother.

He wanted to tell Sherlock that it was easy to make friends, that he just had to be especially patient with people, and that it would do him good in the long run to develop relationships, but this was _Sherlock _he was talking about and it wasn't as simple as that. He looked around, brain working on a solution.

His eyes landed on the little fishbowl beside the boy's bed. It was a wonder the little creature was still alive, seeing as the bedroom itself was a pit of despair. Mycroft took his hand back and pointed to the goldfish swimming around. "Your fish," he said. "You like your fish, right?"

"Barbarossa," Sherlock corrected. The fish had a proper name.

"Right. Barbarossa. And you like Red Beard, right?" The Irish Setter than the family owned was Sherlock's favourite. He was fond of animals.

"Yea?"

"So…you aren't annoyed because Barbarossa is stupid right? He's a fish. You give him the benefit of the doubt. We need to view ordinary people as we view this fish. They interact with us, but they only hold our interest for so long, and yet we appreciate them for their own quaint contributions. If we can tolerate a goldfish how come we can't tolerate a human being?"

Sherlock considered this for a moment. Mycroft knew his words were exceptionally offensive, but he didn't mind much. Anything tamer and Sherlock wouldn't have listened. After a few moments, it seemed the younger one made up his mind and nodded slowly.

"I suppose you're right," he said quietly. He hated to admit defeat.

"Good. Now, sit up. You have to stop stealing from the school. If you're interested in biology, I can bring you home some books and you can study in your spare time. No more of this criminal lifestyle…you're a Holmes, for God's sake, not a pauper." He patted the base of Sherlock's back several times in succession so he'd straighten his spine. His posture was atrocious. "And no more shouting. If Mummy asks you to do something, you do it no matter how much you disagree with it. She's your mother, she deserves your respect. You were raised better than that." He didn't want to their mother to be upset. She was a sweet woman who didn't deserve as much.

Sherlock grumbled something fuzzy in response and sat up straight. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked decidedly angry while Mycroft gave him a quick lecture. "Come now Sherlock," he continued. "You know better than to behave like this. If you are having problems in school you can come speak to me about it." He waited for a response, but didn't get one. "You are doing really well," he added with a softer tone to his voice. "I know it's hard…" Sherlock didn't acknowledge him. Clearly, he was finished with the conversation.

With a discontented hum, Mycroft began to push himself up from the bed, but was stopped by a quick scrambling of limbs and Sherlock was planted neatly in his lap, face squished up against Mycroft's neck. His little fists were closed around the fabric of Mycroft's uniform, leaving tiny, wrinkled dents. He sighed and wrapped his arms around his little brother.

Neither one of them spoke for a while, and then Sherlock mumbled something indistinguishable into his collar bone.

"What was that?" Mycroft prodded, leaning back to try and look past the tangled mess of black hair that was invading his space. Sherlock dipped his head, so he could hide behind his curls, but spoke clearer.

"Thank you."

Mycroft smiled and gave the boy another hug. "Of course," he responded in a hushed tone. What were big brothers for after all? And besides…if he couldn't talk to Mycroft about things, who could he talk to?


End file.
